Libby McFalls

Education and Certifications

MFA, Printmaking, Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI, 2001
BFA, Fine Arts, Columbus College of Art & Design, OH, 1999

Biography

Elizabeth (Libby) McFalls is a Professor of Art and Director of the River Program at Columbus State University, where she works at the intersection of visual art, interdisciplinary education, and student success. In addition to her teaching and studio practice, she provides leadership in the development of innovative undergraduate learning experiences, fostering collaboration across disciplines and creating opportunities for students to connect academic inquiry with creative exploration, community engagement, and experiential learning. She also serves as Columbus State University's representative to the University System of Georgia Faculty Council and as Secretary of the University System of Georgia's First-Year Experience Council Advisory Group.

McFalls earned her MFA in Printmaking from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and her BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio. Raised in East Tennessee, her fascination with storytelling began in childhood through her experiences at the National Storytelling Festival and was deepened by summers spent with her sisters among five living generations of extended family. These experiences continue to inform her artistic practice and her understanding of the connections between memory, identity, and the stories we carry.

Through printmaking and interdisciplinary approaches to image-making, McFalls creates nonlinear visual narratives that explore themes of family, loss, memory, and the complexities of human relationships. Her work blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, life and death, and humor and sorrow, revealing the contradictions and interconnected experiences that shape our understanding of ourselves and one another.

Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at ATHICA: Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, South Bay Contemporary in Los Angeles, SoLA Gallery, Kai Lin Art Gallery, and Gallery 1 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Beyond her studio practice, McFalls is committed to advancing creative, student-centered approaches to higher education through university leadership, interdisciplinary collaboration, and service across the University System of Georgia.

Academic Areas

Art Foundations, Printmaking, Interdisciplinary Studies, Experiential Learning, First-Year Experience, and Student Success.

Research Interests

Creative Practice and Artistic Research

My artistic practice emerges from the intersections of family, memory, identity, and the complexities of everyday life. As an artist, mother, wife, and educator, I resist the notion that these roles exist independently. Instead, I embrace their overlap, allowing the experiences, contradictions, and relationships that shape my personal and professional life to inform my creative work.

Working primarily through printmaking, collage, and mixed-media processes, I create nonlinear visual narratives that explore the tension between personal experience and collective understanding. My approach is intuitive and responsive, embracing experimentation, repetition, layering, and the unexpected relationships that emerge through making. Abstraction, symbolism, and recurring imagery allow me to construct visual stories that blur distinctions between fact and fiction, presence and absence, and humor and sorrow.

Collaboration has been an important component of my practice, particularly through the incorporation of my children's drawings and creative contributions into hybrid print collages. Rather than illustrating specific family experiences, these works function as echoes of shared moments, preserving traces of relationships and experiences that might otherwise disappear into the routines of everyday life.

My work also considers broader social and cultural narratives surrounding motherhood, family, and women's identities. I am interested in challenging idealized representations of family life and examining the ways domestic experiences and caregiving have historically been marginalized within artistic institutions and cultural narratives. Ultimately, my work invites viewers to reconsider the significance of ordinary experiences and the stories embedded within them.

Pedagogical Research and Academic Innovation

My interests in storytelling, collaboration, and creative inquiry also extend into my work in higher education. As Director of the River Program at Columbus State University, I am particularly interested in how interdisciplinary and experiential approaches to teaching can foster student engagement, strengthen connections between academic disciplines, and support undergraduate student success.

My work focuses on the development and implementation of innovative curricular experiences, particularly within first-year and sophomore-level education. I am interested in how project-based learning, community engagement, collaborative teaching, and authentic learning experiences can help students develop a stronger sense of belonging, academic purpose, and connection to their education.

Through curriculum development, faculty collaboration, and program assessment, I explore strategies for creating meaningful learning experiences that extend beyond traditional classroom boundaries. I am particularly interested in how institutions can integrate creativity, interdisciplinary thinking, and experiential learning into undergraduate education while examining their impact on student engagement, persistence, and success.

Across both my artistic and pedagogical interests, I remain drawn to the relationships between lived experience, collaboration, storytelling, and learning—and the ways these intersections can create opportunities for discovery, connection, and transformation.